Industry Specific Buzzwords

Take a long hard look at your site. How often do you use words that only someone very familiar with your industry would understand? If your readers cannot easily understand what you are saying, they will leave your site rapidly.

When we use jargon or industry specific buzzwords without explaining their meaning, we can lose a huge number of potential sales.

If your company offers services, take a look at the list of what you have to offer. Will your target audience understand? You would be shocked to find out how often they do not understand because we use words that they are unfamiliar with.

As an example –

Let’s say you are a writer and I am browsing through your website because I need someone to help me write content for my site. I know that I am looking for a content writer. If your list of services only says copywriter, and this is the keyword you have targeted, will I know that is what I want? Will I know to even search for it?

As another example –

Let’s say you are a web designer and I am browsing through your website because I need someone that will set a site up for me. If you are busy telling me that your work validates with the W3C, will I know what that is?

Will I care? Have you told me why it matters? If you are talking to me about domain names and hosting, do you assume that I know what this all means? Do you have an FAQ (frequently asked questions) section that will explain it to me?

Go ahead and use buzzwords if you must, just make sure it is not your only focus, and that your target audience understands the meaning. One way to verify this is to have someone read through your website who is not familiar with your business. Ask them tell you if they do not understand sections.

Finally, keep in mind that if our target audience does not know the industry specific buzzwords that we keep focusing on, they are also unlikely to search for them either.

Helpful advice and relates to many areas of business. If people don’t know what you are talking about, then you need to simplify. I believe a site should clearly demonstrate what it is you are selling/providing and leave the customer clear about what you can do for them.
Jargon and buzz words run the danger of allowing you to belong to a clique, but that is not a very wide audience for doing business with.

There are times when you have to use technical terms like this though, for instance with your site being W3C compliant. I’m not sure that there is anyway around this as a selling point. However you need to make sure that your audience understands what you’re talking about and this often means an explanation. So in other words you tell them that this is the case and then you translate it into English